hey i also achieved a 40 in psych this year, despite bombing unit 3
as i did bomb unit 3, i would encourage you that most year 11s (doing an accelerated subject) will bomb their first SAC (or their first two...as I did). DO NOT LOSE HOPE. In Unit 4, I made an insane recovery, got an A- on my practice exam with a 10/10 for ER at school and eventually got A+ on the actual vcaa exam.
it's very important to base all your learning on the SD, a friend (who got 43) and i made notes based on SD dot points (which I'm happy to share for free, ofc!) and these helped. i'll link them in a follow up post.
use your teacher! my teacher had been a vcaa assessor and was able to answer most questions
the thing that helped most for the SACs at my school was to memorise every single term and its definition from the AOS relevant to the sac - e.g. sleep - a naturally occurring altered state of consciousness in which an individual experiences a loss of awareness and a disengagement from internal and external stimuli. this may not be as useful for your school though but I had a super thick stack of flashcards.
start as early as you can, the rank 1 and 2 students from my school started their revision in term 3 and received study scores of 49 and 43 respectively. i ended up doing 25 practice exams, but i think they did 40+
good luck! psych is a really enjoyable subject when it comes down to it, and you can definitely do well with some forward planning
TLDR: Don't lose hope after a few bad SACs, make SD linked notes (dot-point analysis), use your teacher, memorise key terms, start revision early

    i'm also happy to sell my chapter summaries (which use both edrolo and jacaranda textbooks, physical notebook) lmk if you're interested, they're also signed by kristy kendall 😭
    our teacher forced us to do them for every chapter

      dino wow! This is soo helpful! I’m doing psych 3/4 next year, and yes we’ve been assigned to do Edrolo chapters for holiday homework and an assessment topic test 🙁 , so I’m seeing Kristy Kendall a lot haha!! And wow you’re so lucky that your teacher was a Vcaa assessor!!

        yeah i know right, she was a huge bonus for all of us, it was awesome 🙂
        i'm willing to help you out anytime btw (for free), just use this thread or something and i can send through tips
        if its anything, if i could do anything differently from the start of psych this is what i would do:
        1) start my exam revision earlier
        2) memorise vcaa command terms before start of year
        3) study harder for my U3 sacs ofc 🙈 and also one of the U4 ones

        4 days later

        Hey @Arielle @s2724!

        I just finished cleaning up my notes, they can be downloaded here. A lot of the content in the document is out of the scope of the study design, but imo helps with understanding some concepts.

        I hope they are useful, and good luck for next year.

          6 days later

          charl mate, your notes are literally A GEM!!! Every concept is literally explained so well, so thank you again
          OUTSTANDING WORK!!!

              yeah sorry, i just checked and it says its pending approval :/ hopefully it'll be up shortly?

              6 days later

              hey! the notes are up now 🙂

              2 months later

              hello!
              @dino (and anyone else! 🙂 )
              I'm currently working on practice exam questions, and this question stumped me lol. Am I on the right track with my responses?

              Question 1a (3 marks)
              Bob works for a highly competitive and demanding advertising company with a stressful work environment. When he first started this job, he was surprised at the additional tasks he was required to complete on a daily basis. After many months, Bob started experiencing headaches and frequently caught colds.
              Identify what stage of Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome Bob was in when he started frequently catching colds. Justify your response.

              My response:
              __Bob was on the verge of the exhaustion stage. As he worked in a highly competitive and stressful work environment, he had constant high levels of cortisol. This started to show first symptoms of the exhaustion stage, with him frequently having headaches and catching colds.

              Q1b) 2 marks
              After working in this highly stressful environment for many years, Bob was diagnosed with a heart condition that required surgery.
              Explain which stage of Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome Bob was experiencing when he was diagnosed with a heart condition.

              As Bob already had symptoms of colds and headaches, and the Hypothalamus Pituitary Adrenal gland (HPA) axis had already provided high levels of cortisol, these sources were now depleted. He became fully vulnerable to illness, suffering from a heart condition. This became the exhaustion stage.

                Arielle I think you're definitely on the right track, but maybe for the first one I'd say the resistance phase instead of on the verge of exhaustion, and maybe explain what cortisol is and why it's important/relevant to his symptoms.
                Also for the exhaustion stage I'd maybe just mention how the body loses ability to cope with stress due to the depletion of resources caused by the effects of cortisol, as the key parts of the exhaustion stage is their low resistance to stress due to depleted resources and the exhausted body.
                You definitely had really good answers though imo, especially referencing the HPA axis in the second question.
                Keep in mind that I'm also another year 12 psych student this year so I can't say exactly how VCAA would mark these but that's personally how I'd add to these answers, hope this helps

                    Rey_of_sunshine thank you for your feedback! Like yeah I was slightly confused as part A it mentions that he gets colds and headaches, and only afterwards did I see that part B involved a heart condition, and the exhaustion stage is where the body is depleted of its resources so I assumed that he was in that phase already in part A.

                        Arielle Yeah, I noticed that too because I think edrolo used these questions as an example, I think it's mainly the exhaustion phase if it's been long term or they mention feelings of tiredness/loss of concentration or other issues in ability to appear to function as normal

                          Arielle hey our teacher always said that vcaa likes to trick us and put sicknesses so students will assume it's exhaustion however it is very rarely exhaustion stage in a Q, try and see how extreme the wording is - heart condition in comparison to coughs and colds. i do remember in resistance stage the immune system is weakened due to prolonged high levels of cortisol and this increases suceptibility to more minor diseases however heart diseases stems from the long-term strain and effects of cortisol which have been placed on the body
                          i agree with rey64 for the most part, you're on the right track just work on identifying the symptoms and grouping them, maybe making a table or flashcards could help you so when you see a practice Q you can immediately identify
                          hope that helps!